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The kurds will need to accept some form of federalism under damascus if they want saa to provide them weapons to hit the turks.not saying its fair but its reality.

The iraqi shias dont particularly like them, america feeds them in trickles and russis are chummy with turks now.so where else are the weapons they need vs the turks going to come from? They don't have a coastline to buy off international traders

Assad would have a grudge on erdogan over the blatant annexation of north syria

Hope the shaheen force part of tiger force moved from east homs to east aleppo will permit saa to advance quickly and also get sdf to advance west of manbij to meet in middle and end the sultans run once and for all. Hit his bandits hard and chase them back to jarablous after isis is put to sleep

as per pakistan ISI briefing for internal security, ISIS recruits in Syria & Iraq are returning back to their native countries and security thus needs to be tightened in view of the thousands coming back.

habal wrote:as per pakistan ISI briefing for internal security, ISIS recruits in Syria & Iraq are returning back to their native countries and security thus needs to be tightened in view of the thousands coming back.

Had read a report in a Kerala news paper that 100s of Indians were also getting trained by ISIS in Afghanistan. Wonder what is in plan for them, when they all come home .

habal wrote:as per pakistan ISI briefing for internal security, ISIS recruits in Syria & Iraq are returning back to their native countries and security thus needs to be tightened in view of the thousands coming back.

levant crises is over now. it just a mopping up operation.

both SAA and SDF are struggling to take and hold ground due to lack of manpower. SDF is trying to bootstrap itself along by training up 100s of arab recruits monthly in basic drills and having them cover low threat areas while their core goes to active fronts. same for SAA and the NDF.

else 1 well supported brigade could cover the 150km from Ithriyah in east homs to Tabqah and take a seat at the Raqqa table, apart from cutting north syria entirely from ISIS.

SDF is also sorely lacking in artillery and dare not take on the turkiye panter and firtina 155mm howitzers in a fight. they will need a lot of weapons and C3I help to beat off the supporting infra of the FSA bandits in north syria. the bandits themselves they can manage. Russia will need to call for and enforce a NFZ to take TAF out of picture.

Singha wrote:India should request Russia to send in the backfires and flatten this camp. or do it ourself with a guest appearance via Iran.

Well... SlickWillie cruise missile attacks (100 SLCMs $1M each, hitting 10 empty pakistan-filled huts in POK and FATA ) obviously had RAA intel on location, but they obligingly told ISI and so the camps were empty. Total waste. A vijit by EyeAF from northern bases (which of course don't exist) might be much more effective. Even with standoff Brahmos. 400% deniability too.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) swiftly advanced in the western countryside of Palmyra yesterday, liberating large swathes of territory from the Islamic State (ISIS) forces along the Homs-Palmyra Highway.Led by the 5th Legion and 18th Tank Division, the Syrian Arab Army liberated the Hayyan Gas Company, Western Al-Bayarat area, and several hilltops after overrunning the Islamic State’s defenses yesterday.

huge mystery finally solved for me ... had wondered about the background and motivation of the western volunteers in YPG and how they even got there. seems they are idealist leftists and anarchists who see a chance for a utopia post war...just as rootless jihadis flocked to ISIS as a chance to found a new caliphate

But the YPG is not your typical ethnic or sectarian faction. Its fighters are loyal to an imprisoned guerrilla leader who was once a communist but now espouses the same kind of secular, feminist, anarcho-libertarianism as Noam Chomsky or the activists of Occupy Wall Street. The Kurds are implementing these ideals in Rojava, and that has attracted a ragtag legion of leftist internationals, like Belden, who have come from nearly every continent to help the YPG beat ISIS and establish an anarchist collective amid the rubble of the war – a "stateless democracy" equally opposed to Islamic fundamentalism and capitalist modernity. They call it the Rojava Revolution, and they want you.

Foreigners interested in joining the YPG receive instructions by encrypted e-mail to fly to Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, a city controlled by a socialist opposition party sympathetic to the Rojava Revolution. Although volunteers are welcome, it's not easy to reach the YPG. To the south is ISIS. To the west is the Free Syrian Army, a disorganized coalition of warlords and mercenaries dominated by Al Qaeda's Nusra Front. To the north is Turkey, the archenemy of Kurdish independence, whose conservative, Islamist government is bombing the YPG. To the east is the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq – for years, its military force, the Peshmerga, permitted volunteers to cross into Syria. But last year, under pressure from Turkey, the KRG closed the only bridge over the Tigris, completing the total blockade on Rojava.

...For the first time since the Spanish Civil War, anarchists controlled a nation-size territory, and Rojava soon became a celebrated cause of the international left...Like Franceschi, he had come back to Rojava for the Raqqa operation. His first tour had coincided with an influx of a different class of volunteers: British and American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them evangelical Christians, who came to kill ISIS and were ignorant of the Kurds' revolutionary politics. They bickered among themselves and caused problems for the Kurds; a few of them did horrible things. Three separate times I was told of a British veteran known only as Tim, a crack shot, and by all accounts a cheerful guy, who enjoyed tasting the blood of the slain and was once seen gnawing on a severed foot.

turkish bandits have got pushed back in al-bab again, despite bussing in more experienced shams front fighters this round, to beef up the child soldiers and C-team mercs it has on the regular payroll. nobody wants to die for a $100 month salary and sultans glory

Russia registers the movement of members of illegal armed units and weapons from Turkey to Syria, head of the Russian delegation at the talks on Syria in Astana, the Russian president's special envoy for Syria Alexander Lavrentyev said Thursday.

Russia jeopardizing its alliance with Turkey.Unless Russia offers Turkey a better deal, Turkey will get closer to US, leaving Russia alone with Iran against West

Worth reading in full.

The sense of enlightenment of islamists everywhere is amazing. Pakistan or Turkey. They need us more than we need them always. Turkey was and is playing Russia against US for some time. Russia seems to be unwilling to play ball now.

Russia’s Tupolev Tu-95MS long-range strategic bombers have attacked the Islamic State’s facilities near the Syrian city of Raqqa with the H-101 cruise missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

“On February 17, 2017, the Tu-95MS strategic bombers, flying from the Russian territory through the airspace of Iran and Iraq, attacked the ISIL (former name of the Islamic State terror group outlawed in Russia) facilities near the Syrian city of Raqqa with the H-101 cruise missiles. The targets included militant camps and training centers as well as a command center of one of the major ISIS units,” the statement reads.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, all targets were destroyed. The bombers were covered by the Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM and Su-35S fighters scrambled from the Hmeimin air base

From the vertical plume of earth, (followed by a general obliteration of the area) it appears that this may be a Detonation-ul-Tunnel, IOW, jet travelling pretty fast when it came out of the ground. I hope!!! The rising of so much earth in a dome also says that the detonation occurred well below the ground.

How come they had the camera trained on it? Again, same answer. Even when I knew it would be scary, it just sent the shivers through me seeing that, even with no sound.

its a tunnel bomb. there are three potential areas - one is from the southern front rebel side of daraa in jordan to the syrian held area, second is deir azzor and third is the damascus suburbs to east ghouta. when the syrians find them they detonate them. sometimes the jihadis also detonate under syrian areas like the first blow in the current daraa attack.

tigers have no intention to getting into a al-bab in deir hafr, they are instead heading for al-khafsa on the river which is the headend of the aleppo water works - the bheemeswari on the kaveri of bluru. deir hafr will be surrounded and isolated.